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This was a slight surprise when Microsoft announced Saturday that it was buying not one but two medium-sized role-playing studios. But strange as it may seem at first glance, this agreement makes perfect sense for all three parties.
After a relatively quiet Xbox showcase in Mexico City on Saturday afternoon, Microsoft Studios director Matt Booty announced that his company plans to acquire Obsidian (Fallout: New Vegas) and Inxile (Wasteland). We already knew the old …Kotaku announced the news last month – but it seemed strange. Obsidian and Inxile share many common traits. They both specialize in old-school RPG RPGs, both of them from the Interplay lineage (Fall) and Black Isle (Baldur Gate), and they both operate in the non-player zone between indie and AAA, making it the type of medium-budget games abandoned by most publishers. Why would Microsoft want both?
For Obsidian and Inxile, the deal was simple: both studios have struggled financially over the years, and crowdfunding has not been enough to support the kind of ambitious games they like to achieve. Obsidian Pillars of eternity 2, which came out earlier this year, was a commercial flop (and a good game eclipsed by the transcendent Divinity Original Sin 2). Inxile recently posted Bard's Tale IV earned mediocre reviews. Moving from participatory project to participatory project seemed untenable. Now, Obsidian and Inxile enjoy financial security for years to come (or at least until the next time the Xbox changes bosses.)
It is not as easy to understand why Microsoft would want two companies with similar pedigrees. Clearly, the lineup of games for the first part of the Xbox is anemic over the last two years, especially if compared to its long-time competitor, Sony, who seems to be launching a game of the year competitor after each other. But Obsidian and Inxile are small studios. Neither Sony is as imposing as Sony Santa Monica (God of the war) or guerrilla games (Horizon: Zero Dawn), and none of them has ever attempted to compete in the arms race at the expense of graphic fidelity. How do they fit into Microsoft's long-term strategy?
The truth is that, as Team Xbox has been signaling for some time now, and as we learned in our own conversations with people inside and outside of the company, Microsoft is no longer interested in direct competition with Sony. It's a battle they lost as Xbox executives began to describe its original and strange plans for the Xbox One in 2013. The PS4 surpassed the Xbox One so brightly that Microsoft stopped providing hardware sales figures.
Instead of licking his wounds and trying to fight Sony again, Phil Spencer's Xbox division took a radically different approach. Today, what Microsoft wants most is studios that will help strengthen its impressive subscription service to Game Pass, its future streaming platform and its ceaseless strategy for gaming. PC. Developing great Xbox exclusives is no longer a priority for Microsoft. In fact, the company decided in 2016 to launch future games on Xbox and PC. Soon, Game Pass will also be available on PC, and it would not be shocking to see Microsoft embrace Steam – or rearrange the Windows store – as it tries to reach the hundreds of millions of people who play computer video games.
So, why would not Microsoft want to own two respected PC developers? Spencer and his colleagues will probably be happy to pack big lots of RPGs with a Game Pass subscription. Obsidian and Inxile have long been filled with talented developers, but hampered by resources. Both games use very specific and hardcore audiences, making them perfect components of Microsoft's long-term strategy.
This does not mean that it will work perfectly. Any developer who has worked with previous versions of Microsoft has stories about the frustration of the company's management structure. Even Obsidian has a horror story, which has made this acquisition particularly shocking for many people.
In 2011, Obsidian signed up to create a game called Stormlands this was intended to be a launch title for the Xbox One. It was an ambitious role-playing game that Microsoft had canceled for a number of reasons – everyone involved agreed that the two companies share the same guilt – but it was also a game that suffered from the character disproportionate to Microsoft at the time. Feargus Urquhart, CEO of Obsidian, told me in an interview a few years ago that Microsoft had a team of directors and producers assigned to Stormlands, including an executive producer who worked with the studio at the beginning of the pitching and greenlighting process.
As initially launched, Stormlands Urquhart said the cooperative multiplayer mode was planned. Then this executive producer made a different suggestion. Urquhart recalled: "About three months after the start of the process [he] I think what we want to do is really get out of the park with that. What do you think about dropping the multiplayer mode and really focusing on the fact that it's an excellent role-playing game? "
Then, as it was common for Microsoft at the time, there was a reshuffle. "About two weeks later, he was reassigned and a different producer was chosen," Urquhart said. "He had a different vision for that, and this vision was to double the multiplayer mode."
Stormlands was, in many ways, the epitome of the old way of doing Microsoft. Microsoft has emphasized a long list of additional features, including Kinect, cloud computing and SmartGlass support, and the project has become so gigantic that neither company has been able to recover it. Under the new management and structure, the Xbox department is very different and it's easy to envision a world where Spencer and its partners allow Obsidian and Inxile to flourish. If that happens, the good news for gaming enthusiasts is that two talented mid-sized studios that may not fit into the gaming industry have a chance to succeed in the long run through ambition growing of Microsoft.
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